Hummingbird's Unsung Impact on Local&nbspSearch

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Though I no longer actively consult for clients, there seems to have been a significant qualitative shift in local results since Google's release of Hummingbird that I haven't seen reported on search engine blogs and media outlets. The columns I have seen have generally espoused advice to take advantage of what Hummingbird was designed to do rather than looked at the outcome of the update.

From where I sit, the outcome has been a slightly lower overall quality in Google's local results, possibly due in part to a "purer" ranking algorithm in local packs. While these kinds of egregious results reported soon after Hummingbird's release have mostly disappeared, it's the secondary Hummingbird flutter, which may have coincided with the November 14th "update," that seems to have caused the most noticeable changes.

I'll be working with Dr. Pete to put together more quantitative local components of Mozcast in the coming months, but for the time being, I'll just have to describe what I'm seeing today with a fairly simplistic analysis.

To do the analysis, I performed manual searches for five keywords, both geo-modified and generic, in five diverse markets around the country. I selected these keywords based on terms that I knew Google considered to have "local intent" across as broad a range of industries as I could think of. After performing the searches, I took note of the top position and number of occurrences of four types of sites, as well as position and number of results in each "pack."

Keywords

Markets

Result Type Taxonomy

personal injury lawyer

Chicago

national directory (e.g., Yelp)

assisted living facility

Portland

regional directory (e.g., ArizonaGolf.com)

wedding photographer

Tampa

local business website (e.g., AcmeElectric.com)

electrician

Burlington

barnacle webpage (e.g., facebook.com/acmeelectric)

pet store

Flagstaff

national brand (e.g., Petsmart.com)

I also performed an even smaller analysis using three keywords that returned carousel results (thanks to SIM Partners for this sample list of keywords): "golf course," "restaurant," and "dance club."

Again, a very simple analysis that is by no means intended to be a statistically significant study. I fully realize that these results may be skewed by my Portland IP address (even though I geo-located each time I searched for each market), data center, time of day, etc.

I'll share with you some interim takeaways that I found interesting, though, as I work on a more complete version with Dr. Pete over the winter.

1. Search results in search results have made a comeback in a big way

If anything, Hummingbird or the November 14th update seem to have accelerated the trend that started with the Venice update: more and more localized organic results for generic (un-geo-modified) keywords.

But the winners of this update haven't necessarily been small businesses. Google is now returning specific metro-level pages from national directories like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Findlaw, and others for these generic keywords.

This trend is even more pronounced for keywords that do include geo-modifiers, as the example below for "pet store portland" demonstrates.

Results like the one above call into question Google's longstanding practice of minimizing the frequency with which these pages occur in Google search results. While the Yelp example above is one of the more blatant instances that I came across, plenty of directories (including WeddingWire, below) are benefitting from similar algorithmic behavior. In many cases the pages that are ranking are content-thin directory pages—the kind of content to which Panda, and to some extent Penguin, were supposed to minimize visibility.

Overall, national directories were the most frequently-occurring type of organic result for the phrases I looked at—a performance amplified when considering geo-modified keywords alone.

National brands as a result type is underrepresented due to 'personal injury lawyer,' 'electrician,' and 'wedding photographer' keyword choices. For the keywords where there are relevant national brands ('assisted living facility' and 'pet store'), they performed quite well.

2. Well-optimized regional-vertical directories accompanied by content still perform well

While a number of thriving directories were wiped out by the initial Panda update, here's an area where the Penguin and Hummingbird updates have been effective. There are plenty of examples of high-quality regionally focused content rewarded with a first-page position—in some cases above the fold. I don't remember seeing as many of these kinds of sites over the last 18 months as I do now.

Especially if keywords these sites are targeting return carousels instead of packs, there's still plenty of opportunity to rank: in my limited sample, an average of 2.3 first-page results below carousels were for regional directory-style sites.

3. There's little-to-no blending going on in local search anymore

While Mike Blumenthal and Darren Shaw have theorized that the organic algorithm still carries weight in terms of ranking Place results, visually, authorship has been separated from place in post-Hummingbird SERPs.

Numerous "lucky" small businesses (read: well-optimized small businesses) earned both organic and map results across all industries and geographies I looked at.

4. When it comes to packs, position 4 is the new 1

The overwhelming majority of packs seem to be displaying in position 4 these days, especially for "generic" local intent searches. Geo-modified searches seem slightly more likely to show packs in position #1, which makes sense since the local intent is explicitly stronger for those searches.

Together with point #3 in this post, this is yet another factor that is helping national and regional directories compete in local results where they couldn't before—additional spots appear to have opened up above the fold, with authorship-enabled small business sites typically shown below rather than above or inside the pack. 82% of the searches in my little mini-experiment returned a national directory in the top three organic results.

5. The number of pack results seems now more dependent on industry than geography

This is REALLY hypothetical, but prior to this summer, the number of Place-related results on a page (whether blended or in packs) seemed to depend largely on the quality of Google's structured local business data in a given geographic area. The more Place-related signals Google had about businesses in a given region, and the more confidence Google had in those signals, the more local results they'd show on a page. In smaller metro areas for example, it was commonplace to find 2- and 3-packs across a wide range of industries.

At least from this admittedly small sample size, Google increasingly seems to be a show a consistent number of pack results by industry, regardless of the size of the market.

Keyword

# in Pack

Reason for Variance

assisted living facility

6.9

6-pack in Burlington

electrician

6.9

6-pack in Portland

personal injury lawyer

6.4

Authoritative OneBox / Bug in Chicago

pet store

3.0

wedding photographer

7.0

This change may have more to do with the advent of the carousel than with Hummingbird, however. Since the ranking of carousel results doesn't reliably differ from that of (former) packs, it stands to reason that visual display of all local results might now be controlled by a single back-end mechanism.

6. Small businesses are still missing a big opportunity with basic geographic keyword optimization

This is more of an observational bullet point than the others. While there were plenty of localized organic results featuring small business websites, these tended to rank lower than well-optimized national directories (like Yelp, Angie's List, Yellowpages.com, and others) for small-market geo-modified phrases (such as "electrician burlington").

For non-competitive phrases like this, even a simple website with no incoming links of note can rank on the first page (#7) just by including "Burlington, VT" in its homepage Title Tag. With just a little TLC—maybe a link to a contact page that says "contact our Burlington electricians"—sites like this one might be able to displace those national directories in positions 1-2-3.

Look at the number of times Facebook and Yelp show up in last year's citation study I co-authored with Whitespark's Darren Shaw. Clearly these are major "fixed objects" to which small businesses should be attaching their exoskeletons.

Yet 74% of searches I conducted as part of this experiment returned no Barnacle results.

This result for "pet store chicago" is one of the few barnacles that I came across—and it's a darn good result! Not only is Liz (unintenionally?) leveraging the power of the Yelp domain, but she gets five schema'd stars right on the main Google SERP—which has to increase her clickthrough rate relative to her neighbors.

Interestingly, the club industry is one outlier where small businesses are making the most of power profiles. This might have been my favorite result—the surprisingly competitive "dance club flagstaff" where Jax is absolutely crushing it on Facebook despite no presence in the carousel.

What does all this mean?

I have to admit, I don't really know the answer to this question yet. Why would Google downgrade the visibility of its Place-related results just as the quality of its Places backend has finally come up to par in the last year? Why favor search-results-in-local-search-results, something Google has actively and successfully fought to keep out of other types of searches for ages? Why minimize the impact of authorship profiles just as they are starting to gain widespread adoption by small business owners and webmasters?

One possible reason might be in preparation for more card-style layouts on mobile phones and wearable technology. But why force these (I believe slightly inferior) results on users of desktop computers, and so far in advance of when cards will be the norm?

At any rate, here are five takeaways from my qualitative review of local results in the last couple of months.

Reports of directories' demise have been greatly exaggerated. For whatever reason (?), Google seems to be giving directories a renewed lease on life. With packs overwhelmingly in the fourth position, they can now compete for above-the-fold visibility in positions 1-2-3, especially in smaller and mid-size metro areas.

Less-successful horizontal directories (non-Yelps and TripAdvisors, e.g.) should consider the economics of their situation. Their ship has largely sailed in larger metro areas like Chicago and Portland. But they still have the opportunity to dominate smaller markets. I realize you probably can't charge a personal injury lawyer in Burlington what you charge his colleague in downtown Chicago. But, in terms of the lifetime value of who will actually get business from your advertising packages, the happy Burlington attorney probably exceeds the furious one from Chicago (if she is even able to stay in business through the end of her contract with you).

The Barnacle opportunity is huge, for independent and national businesses alike. With Google's new weighting towards directories in organic results and the unblending of packs, barnacle listings present an opportunity for savvy businesses to earn three first-page positions for the same keyword—one pack listing, one web listing, and one (or more) barnacle listing.

National brands who haven't taken my advice to put in a decent store locator yet should surely do so now. Well-structured regional pages, and easily-crawled store-level pages, can get great visibility pretty easily. (If you're a MozCon attendee or have purchased access, you can learn more about this advice in my MozCon 2013 presentation.)

Andrew Shotland already said it in the last section of his Search Engine Land column, but regionally-focused sites—whether directories or businesses—should absolutely invest in great content. With Penguin and Hummingbird combined, thin-content websites of all sizes are having a harder time ranking relative to slightly thicker content directories.

Well, that's my take on what's happening in local search these days...is the Moz community seeing the same things? Do you think the quality of local results has improved or declined since Hummingbird? Have you perceived a shift since November 14th? I'd be particularly interested to hear comments from SEOs in non-U.S. markets, as I don't get the chance to dive into those results nearly as often as I'd like.

About David-Mihm —
David Mihm is one of the world’s leading practitioners of Local search engine marketing. He has created and promoted search-friendly websites for clients of all sizes since the early 2000’s. David co-founded GetListed.org, which he sold to Moz in November 2012. His annual Local Search Ranking Factors project is among the most important studies of Local SEO.

We have noticed this problem with Yelp too. Apparently whatever Hummingbird did undid a lot of the changes that the previous domain clustering update did. Besides the national sites like Yelps, TripAdvisors and UrbanSpoons this has been a boost for large, multi-location national companies as I have seen them dominating more SERPs by having both multiple organic and local pack results. However, once again the small business owner suffers immensely.

Dan -- YES! It's like disabling the authorship-place clustering mechanism also disabled the domain clustering mechanism. Here's hoping for small businesses' sake that the next update fixes the problem :)

Thanks for your comment. Just to give you a little background on a discussion we've had internally: we're a software company not focused on in-person visits, the way many small businesses are, so we've made the conscious decision to streamline requests for assistance through our Help Hub rather than encouraging people to make a personal appointment. Our customers will actually get better service through the Help Hub than if they tried to call our front desk or showed up at our front door :)

It's true! Since we don't have in-person visits and aren't really able to accommodate them, we didn't think it would be helpful to have our address on the site. We also get a lot of phone calls from spammers, as well as people who aren't a good fit for our software. We know keeping this off the site comes at an optimization cost, but in the end, we're trying it this way end weighing the pros and cons. Thanks for the input!

A few already mentioned how this may be industry-dependent... I agree that this may be playing a role, but I think it's important to also look at the online engagement within these particular industries. The wedding industry benefits hugely from millions of brides wanting to share & flaunt everything about their wedding, so sites providing a platform for this receive incredible amounts of user-generated content. The same is true for the travel industry. I was involved in the SEO strategy for one of the major directories referenced in one of the examples… the optimization is 4+ years old and trust me, seeing it still in place makes my stomach turn (I worked on this project at a former company). But, we have to acknowledge that sites like TripAdvisor.com are providing large amounts of free, user-generated, unique content to their visitors. Ultimately, these sites are providing a digital form of one of the best ways for businesses to grow (word of mouth), so I don’t necessarily see this as a loss for small businesses or users.

Totally agree that sites like TripAdvisor have a ton of great UGC. My problem with the results above is that Google is linking to DIRECTORY pages on TA and other sites like it. It's an extra click for the user to drill-down to a specific business. And there are way too many examples of un-clustered multiple results from the same domain for that to be a good user experience. Would be better for both SMBs and searchers for Google to mix things up a little (as they were prior to Hummingbird).

One view, though, is that search-results-in-search-results allows for many more businesses to show up on page 1 (since each directory page might hold 10+ relevant local businesses). Instead of competing for 1 of only 10 first page positions in Google, businesses can focus on providing great services that encourage customer referrals. I see what you mean though- a mix would certainly be better for all parties. Thanks for putting all this together!

As usual, David - another spot-on Local Search blog post....and the part about the 'geo + keyword' strength is not only noted...but a solid part of our own client SEO on-page builds for our city/regional clients too!

Awesome post. I've been fighting with a client on local and organic rankings and a lot of what you covered are points I've been trying to get through to my client. I'm glad I know what I am doing is correct. Thanks!

Exactly What i am Facing!! My competitors are just repeating their KW in meta and title and they are still up. Well humming was to find exact keywords and phrases. As you told that directories are considered priorities which also making us to pay them of suggesting us .

A named Zarc they have registered their self on Google directories with "php training in ahmedabad" they don't have any thing in their content still they are ahead of us. No backlinks, No off page, NO on page still they are ahead of my website. This all happened after humming bird update.

David - this post is PACKED with great up-to-date information, and investigates so many things I've been wondering about of late... THANK YOU for keeping up with all of this, and sharing your (and others) findings in such an understandable way. Please keep it coming :-)

Thanks for the insights! I have but two questions regarding your 6th point above. When you say having an internal link pointing to the contact us page with both Geo-target and primary focus (in this instance, "electrician"), do you really think that would help push the site up the 1st page of Google's SERPs? And would you recommend this backlink coming from the home page, or maybe even having variations of anchor text from all pages pointing to the contact us page?

My thought was that having a similar anchor text pointing at the home page from internal pages would have more of a positive impact, as the home page is the most authoritative page and is actually ranking for that term..

I was just using that as an illustration of a technique that might help. In this case, I think the direction of the anchor text is less important than its presence. But you're right that it might be most effective coming from subpages to the homepage.

It almost seems like they're re-splitting local to work in a stand-alone format, as you said. This may be to better integrate with the new(ish) maps, or it may be for card-like results in mobile, Glass, and Google Now. Whatever structural changes they made on 10/25 seem really significant (merging the CSS for packs and "near" boxes), but I still haven't wrapped my head around it. I just have a gut feeling that something big is happening for local.

If you click a Yelp listing, you'll be presented with my Google Ads...if you click a link to a local business, they most likely won't be serving any Google Ads. So it makes sense Google would skew the results to favor those displaying more of their Ads.

Why would I want search-results-in-local-search-results? If I had wanted Yelp results, I would have gone to Yelp.com to begin with, not Google.com.

We ran this kind of experiment a few weeks back and got some immediate reward, its now solidified and similar searches are also ranking. it's pretty cool.

Our local seo experiment was a pretty simple blog post (so no existing links to that page) and then push with social media, so it was too fold - one can social alone be enough (answer yes) and how quickly can local rankings change (answer within days)

You bring up a great point about the search results coming up in the search results. I am seeing a lot of the specific metro-level pages coming up in the legal industry for keyword phrases I check for our clients. I see a lot of of benefit going to Findlaw and Justia in the legal industry. I am noticing these more and more for various search phrases across a lot of the legal phrases I have been checking lately and I especially want to say thanks for pointing out that #6 tip since its one of those back to basics things that we often overlook and in this industry I see a lot of potential for that.

From our perspective in the niche of home energy contractors, I can confirm everything you're pointing out about the growing strength of the directories. While Angie's List and Home Advisor have always been players in our world, I have been seeing (at least anecdotally) their rise in the first four. The bigger news for us, however, is the emergence of Yelp in the SAB category. This is not uniform in all geographies, and definitely seems to be more heavily weighted in what I consider the more technologically sophisticated locations (SF, Seattle, the "other" Portland), but Yelp has become very important and it's happened very quickly. It's clear that Yelp isn't just for restaurants anymore. That said, I'm as confounded as you about why Google would be doing this, given how they despise each other. An opinion only, but I'm betting this may have more to do with reviews than anything else.

Google Hummingbird really make large scale changes in local SERP. Now when i am searching the hotels and market in my nearby location. most of the result is showing the nearest hotels and market. Before Hummingbird this was happening but not very much appropriate.

You're the first I have seen comment on this. IIMHO - the local results are overwhelmed by spammy directories like Yelp, Yext, YP and others that have been clamoring to "update" client local listings - and "organize" Google PPC campaigns for a monthly fee.

Also, national mega-sites with links in the millions are, as you note, using their "pure rank" to trump more relevant, on the money pages.

Unlike the quality upgrade claim from Google, the quality has gone noticeably down in favor of heavy hitters ($$$) - follow the money trail.

Thank you for this very informative post! I agree that it seems when a local website does a little bit of SEO that it can still fairly easily outrank the larger directory sites. It'll be interesting to watch and see what Google's next move is in regards to the local SEO landscape, since I have a hard time believing these changes will stick.

Extremely interesting! I am very interested in local search results and some of the information you have shared is exactly what I've noticed. I can't remember the last time I saw integrated/blended local search results. And your "Barnacle" idea is dead-on I think.

I was just beginning to register that directories were starting to occupy more space for the few searches I tend to carry out over here in the UK. You made a penny drop David. Thanks for the heads up. So am I right in thinking this just amplifies the previous message about WELL optimised listings being the focus rather than numbers and thin content?

The Hummingbird update really shows how Google is ONLY interested in large businesses that they can squeeze money out of with their monopoly. Small business is of no interest to them. Search Results quality has taken a backseat to profits and it's only getting worse. Most local results are filled with useful national directories and their content spam pages that are of no use to the local customer. The web is turning into one big pile of content spam.

Great post David. We're seeing similar results with legal industry searches. I have noticed if you include a geo modifier (at least with larger metros) you tend to get the large legal directories (and occasionally non-legal directories like Yelp and Thumbtack). But if you drop the geo modifier in your search, more attorney websites appear in the results (not always but I have seen it with more general terms like "divorce lawyer" rather than "child support lawyer"). Also, dropping the geo modifier also lets media sites creep in (Abut.com, MarketWatch to name a couple). Google seems to be viewing these as having informational intent for some searchers, which seems to make sense given the lack of geo.

I think these serps are lower quality than pre-Hummingbird. Most non-7 pack results I'm seeing are less relevant than before Hummingbird. But I think these results (and the ones you mention) will improve as Google monitors bounce rate and sorts out what people are really looking for. These serps feel like Google is still heavy in test mode.

Great observations, David. I can report that I have seen #1 and #3 in the UK. I thought I was going crazy with #1 - seeing more Yell.com and Yelp results - so I'm glad it's part of a global trend. #3 I feel particularly silly about because I recently told a prospect that these days you either show in the Map or separately - not both. I bet it changed shortly after that, hah! :-)

Hrm, I don't know about this. Months ago we started noticing clients that ranked in the pack and organically eventually lost one of the results. Given the result was for the same URL (excluding barnacle results). Essentially, we found those dual ranking bonuses to be short lived. :)

Hey Josh, couple follow up questions for you (for my own curiosity) -- #1 what industry were/are your clients in, and #2 how many months ago? One of the things that Dan Leibson and I were speculating is that this clustering mechanism has recently (within the last ~2 weeks) been reversed...

I don't think that Google is going to give much importance to directories related results in its search. Hummingbird was focused at giving the user the best search result for what one opts for. Perhaps sites like Yelp and many more have a great business section where people can view the business hours and many granular details for the business. Maybe for this reason Google prefers them. All marketing is now focused on end user experience as to what and how much the site is beneficial for the results one is looking for. We all need to define first our buyer personas and then target them with better content to get benefited. Anyway, thanks a lot for the visual analysis of your findings. Great work I must say!!

Hi David,
Got to disagree on something you wrote there (especially since I optimized on that part ;)

"While Mike Blumenthal and Darren Shaw have theorized that the organic algorithm still carries weight in terms of ranking Place results, visually, authorship has been separated from place in post-Hummingbird SERPs."

Nope, that still works - but depends on G+ Profile and connected G+ Page (and you need to be logged out)

Very interesting David. We were working on a client of ours today that is in Australia. For nearly 18 months they've held over a dozen #1 ranked keywords primarily location related and all of the sudden. GONE. Looks like we'll be doing a bit more research.

Is it possible that Google is ranking businesses by industry over locality because they have research that shows people are willing to travel a little beyond a local vicinity for good services? That's just my assumption, but I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

There certainly seems to be an industry-sensitive "coefficient" in determining the size of a radius of relevant places to display in a search result...but in my mind, not necessarily the number of results in a pack. Could you expand on your thought a little bit more?

I'm actually just speculating based off your findings. I think it's sound that Google may be listing business a little farther away because they're deemed "better" in the eyes of Google. But, like you said in the article, that could just be the result of good web optimization.

David, I'm always humbled by your posts on Local Search. I always feel more equipped to handle my clients' questions and develop new strategies for dealing with the changes to the algorithm and the results are displayed after reading them!

Same kinds of techniques you would to to build rankings for a page on your own website -- linkbuilding, social sharing, etc. Primarily the former. I might suggest a couple of guest posts with byline links to your Yelp profile as a start. It shouldn't take much to get that profile to pop, given the strength of the Yelp domain.

Excellent observations especially point 1. One of keyphrases that we are tracking for our client is "mobile podiatry san jose" and in the last couple of months we have seen the first 10 results change from regional smaller sites to national directories including Yelp , Zocdoc ,Yellow pages and Super Pages. (Another example to support that point) . We're seeing a lot more of the national directories show up in the first pages for our clients.

Even searched for this keyword "Plumbing Contractor Timonium" after Penguin 2.1 update on 4th October we have observed the first 10 results change from small local business to national directories & data aggregators. Not Sure on which route Google is going?

Will be awaiting for more in-depth analysis and observations from you and Dr. Pete on different verticals geographies.

Some great points, especially with regards to number 6, some small changes could have a great impact. You want to target relevant people so make sure that your Title Tags and content has the relevant information to be picked up by Google!

Your article basically nailed it for my meeting with a potential new client today, David. They have dropped in rankings due to the national directories (mainly recruiting sites like Indeed and CareerBuilder). I saw dropped like they got pushed off the face of the Earth, but their have been bumped down as of a few months ago to 4 and 5 positions, yet show #1 in the Local Maps results. So, they are still the first CPA firm ranking technically speaking for "city accounting" keyword. Your screenshots of real search results provided that extra support to our conversation.

Your point of #6 reinforced my strategy as proof of building links to inner pages is a must and remains effective. This business, and the 4 competitors he wants (needs) to outrank, all have links just to their Home page. Thank you for helping me basically close a good lead!

Now, on to read more about the Barnacle SEO concept. Cheers! - Patrick

Always enjoy reading your posts, David. I could have misunderstood, but I was originally under the impression that the recent Hummingbird update had "little to zero impact" on SERPs (per Google). So needless to say I'm really glad you put this insightful post together that does a great job outlining some of the key changes that some SEOs and online marketers can expect from the recent algo shift. I can say that even before the update, I noticed that a couple attorney clients have been pushed down by lawyer directory sites. Some don't even have a very high domain authority or backlink profile. This definitely answers a lot of questions.

I'm finding that a lot of results are also returning domain name authoritative sites such as minnesotacarrental.com or minneapolisautorepair.com. It almost seems to me that Hummingbird is working a bit backwards rather than forwards. I thoroughly enjoyed not seeing 5-6 Yelp or Angie's List listings on a page at a time. I will be interesting to see what Google has in store.

I noticed a surprising number of EMDs in assisted living in particular. I chalked it up to the directory-skew but you're right, there could have been a little bit of a rollback on that throttle as well. Good insight.